Small Nation, Big Family
A Sinai School student supporter of Israel and its soldiers (courtesy: Sinai Schools)
The debate still rages in my army unit if we could have been better prepared for the stormy night, but the fact is that throughout the downpour every tent collapsed in the wind and broke one after the other. In the end, we were just a bunch of drenched soldiers, like mice in the rain, without a roof over our heads. In my misery, I published a post on Facebook with a picture of the shattered tents, and within a few minutes I received a contact: “Hello, my name is Eric from Los Angeles. My community has already provided tents to hundreds of units in the IDF. Give me the details of the unit, and how many tents you need, and in a few hours we’ll have it all worked out.”
This is how we learned, like hundreds of thousands of combat soldiers, the value of the donations from abroad. That support, and the items and objects and food sent from throughout the Jewish Diaspora, accompanied us throughout the fighting. One day some trays of pizza with olives and Bulgarian cheese arrived with a link to a video of children with special needs at the Sinai Elementary School in New Jersey, packing popcorn in bags and arranging them for sale. “We make popcorn to get the hayyalim pizza” they explain to the camera, then turn to us: “Thank you for protecting us.”
A bite of the pizza got a little stuck in my throat. What wrong turn had I made in my life, I wondered, if at the age of thirty-seven, I needed an eight-year-old to sell popcorn to finance my slice of pizza. But this was also the moment when I realized that there is a much bigger story here than the material aid itself. It has its roots in the old blue and white tin pushkes of the Jewish National Fund, and even before that, with the biblical donation of the half-shekel. A donation that not only gave the Temple tremendous economic power (as Josephus described), but made Jerusalem the capital city and center of Jewish people worldwide (as Philo wrote). “They say we are the smallest nation in the world,” a Jew from Florida, who sent thousands of ceramic vests to the IDF, told my father R. David Stav, “but the truth is we are simply the biggest family.”
There is a dear couple, who live in the United States, with whom I once had the opportunity to work on a project. Right after Simchat Torah ended in America they started sending messages, at least once a week. Checking in on how I was, asking what I needed, and simply encouraging and offering support. At one point, the man came on one of the countless missions, with large satchels of cookies and snacks. But only after a month or two did it occur to me to ask them: “Wait, how are you doing? How is the war affecting you?” And they began to report the startling increase in anti-Semitic incidents in their city, and how all the synagogues had beefed up security and hired guards, and how difficult it is to walk the streets with symbols of support for Israel. They went on and on, and sent links to articles, and as the information accumulated, I also began to feel ashamed. They are so connected to what’s going on in Israel—they too are “drafted” in their own way. I wondered to what extent we in Israel, on the homefront or frontlines, experience this support as an expression of alliance, of family, and not just of a bank account across the ocean. How aware are we that the war here actually has countless fronts worldwide?
The problem did not start with the war. I remember how, on one of my first trips abroad, I was surprised to discover the proficiency of Jewish New Yorkers in the names of the towns in Judea and Samaria and the street map of Jerusalem, while my friends and I did not know the difference between Queens and Manhattan. Nor did we feel a special need to do so. Recently a friend involved in such things told me about the almost overwhelming unwillingness of educational institutions in Israel to cooperate with student exchange programs and various types of meetings with students from abroad. Perhaps this war, which has already injected us with a drop of humility, will also be able to change this attitude.
In advance of Rosh Hodesh Nisan the half-shekel donations were collected for the Mikdash:
The coins were stored in the Temple treasury in three large baskets. The Kohen collected funds from the first basket on behalf of the people living in Eretz Yisrael; from the second basket on behalf of the people living in the cities near Eretz Yisrael; and from the third basket on behalf of the people living in Bavel and on behalf of the people living in Media and on behalf of the people living in the distant countries (Shekalim 3:4).
This enchanting Mishna describes the priest who fills three overflowing coffers from piles of half shekels that have accumulated in the chambers. I adore this portrait of the Temple procedure specifically because the calling out of the place names has no specific halakhic import. And yet it is significant for the Kohen to turn his gaze to the Jews in Bavel (and today in New Jersey) and say that we recognize their contribution, that when we offer our sacrifices here in the Land of Israel, we do so in their name.
Rabbi Avraham Stav teaches at Kollel Shaarei Zion in Yad HaRav Nissim, Jerusalem, when he is not serving in an artillery unit. This essay is translated from a version that appeared in Makor Rishon. Read his recent TRADITION article on Rav Kook’s progressivism and conservativism.